She nodded slowly. “So you don’t want me to marry the Sheikh in case I end up as his least favourite wife?” She was able to joke only because she knew the practice of Sheikh’s taking multiple wives had died decades earlier in Tari’ell.
His hand on her leg was warm and soul-stirring. He stroked her distractedly. When he spoke, his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. “I grew up here. In this palace. When I was ten years old, I decided to try my strength against one of those trees.” He shot her a look that she didn’t understand. “They are as big as twenty men at their base. It took a very long time to saw it through.”
Her eyes were knitted together. She could imagine him as a child. He would have always been strong and capable. Like her, perhaps he grew up feeling out of step because of his obvious differences to his peers. “But why?”
He shook his head. “I was ten. A child. I wanted to see if I could bring it down. And I did.”
“You did?”
He took her hand and pointed it to a discernible gap in the wall of green. “Right there. Can you see?”
The moon was angled right through the gap in the hedge. She nodded slowly, her eyes floating to his face. “Why are you telling me this?”
He studied her with dark concern. “Those trees are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. And yet I destroyed one. For the sake of destruction. I tested my power against it, and felled it. It took me over a week. I crept out every night, and worked until the first light of dawn was breaking over the Allan ranges. Finally, it succumbed. I learned one of the most important lessons of my life that day.”
She swallowed, not quite sure why her emotions were rioting all over the place. “I don’t understand. What lesson?”
His accent became thicker when he was concentrating. “My father was furious. But he knew that no anger could punish me more than my own regrets would. I had ruined something irreplaceable. I had destroyed something of untold value. I swore that day I would never be so reckless again.”
The story, told by someone as breathtakingly macho as this man, made her pulse thready. “I still don’t …”
He groaned, crushing her to him and kissing her in one movement. “How do you not see?” His mouth devoured hers, sending shockwaves of pleasure rioting through her body. “I’m not going to ruin you.”
She pulled away from him, confusion making her face pale. “I don’t understand, I’m sorry.” She lifted her trembling fingers to her lips. They were swollen by his passion.
“I wanted to meet you. To be sure.”
“You did meet me. Yesterday.”
His lips lifted. “Yes. But you haven’t met me.”
“I … haven’t?”
He stood abruptly, his dark eyes glinting in his face as he looked down at her. “I am Khalid ash-Hareth, and you are to be my wife.”